Language Contact and
Language History
Nicole Scott
General Aims
 To identify the social contexts of
language contact
 To discuss the impact of contact on
languages.
 To discuss how new languages emerge.
Background
The Caribbean space has a remarkable
montage of linguistic situations. A study of
the social and linguistic factors which
defines us as a people will enable us to
understand why we are who we are as a
people.
What are the social
contexts of language
contact?
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Social contexts of
language contact
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Trade/Business
Work
Recreation
Educational institutions
Worship centres
Migration
 Willful migration e.g. Asian migration
 Forced migration e.g. Slave trade
What is the impact of
contact on
languages?
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Impact of Contact on
Language
 Language death
 No consensus when a language is to be
regarded as dead.
 Minority languages most vulnerable
Impact of Contact on
Language cont’d
 Language maintenance
 varieties can be maintained to different
degrees. Three categories are proposed by
Siegal (1990:94-96). According to him,
languages can be:  thriving
 declining
 dying
Impact of Contact on
Language cont’d
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Bilingualism
Multilingualism
Continuum
Diglossia
 De jure
 De facto
Code switching/Code mixing
Borrowing – syntax, lexicon etc.
Impact of Contact on
Language cont’d
 Language Change
 Synchronic language change – study of a language
at a given moment.
 Diachronic language change – studies the history of
a language or language families as it changes over
time.
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Syntax
Phonology
Lexicon
Semantics
(slangs)
Impact of Contact on
Language cont’d
 New varieties emerge
 Jargon – occurs when individuals simplify and
reduce their language on an ad hoc basis with no
fixed norms (for example Jamaicans buying
sunglasses in Caracas)
 Pidgin – a reduced language that results from
extended contact between groups of people with no
language in common. It evolves when they need
some means of verbal communication for example
trade, but no group learns the native language of
any other group. E.g. Tok Pisin spoken in Papua
New Guinea
Impact of Contact on
Language cont’d
 Creole Languages
 Spoken natively
 History of slavery
 Spoken natively
 Use covers all aspects of social life
 Examples of Creole languages
 English Lexicon Creole -JC, French Lexicon Creole TFC, Portuguese Lexicon Creole - Papiamento, Dutch
Based Creole- Berbice Dutch Creole
How do new
languages emerge?
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How do new languages
emerge? cont’d
 Deliberate creation – For example
Esperanto
 People are forced to co-exist – Creoles.
 There are various theories of Creole genesis
 Language Bio-program Hypothesis (Bickerton)
 Superstrate view (Mufwene)
 Substrate view (Alleyne)
Questions
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